Ever since she was young, singer-songwriter Victoria Canal has been searching for her voice.  From “spilling everything out” in her teenage years to “an extreme reeling in” during her early  twenties, the Spanish-American, London-based artist could never quite settle in the middle  ground that felt true to the multi-faceted person she was on the inside. Now on the cusp of  releasing her debut album Slowly, It Dawns, she’s finally getting comfortable somewhere in  between. “The album has been a very concerted practice in appreciating all sides of me,” she  says. 

For the past decade, Canal has been making her mark as a deeply introspective songwriter  whose natural talent radiates when she’s at her most vulnerable. From challenging beauty  standards, brave reflections on mental health to diaristic confessions on the thrill of new  connections, her fearless approach to her craft has found legions of devoted fans who see  themselves in her unflinchingly honest lyrics. Her songwriting talents were recognised with the  Ivor Novello Rising Star award in 2023, followed by Best Song Musically and Lyrically for her  cinematic opus ‘Black Swan’ in 2024. Within that time, she also opened for Hozier on tour and  performed her own run of shows across the US and Europe. Her bumper year of success  culminated with an unforgettable appearance on stage with Coldplay at Glastonbury 2024. 

Finally ready to release her debut album, Canal has arrived with newfound clarity about the artist  she wants to be. Where 2022 EP Elegy found her working through grief, 2023’s Well Well was  the “wounded rebirth” that inevitably followed. With Slowly, It Dawns, she’s ready to step into  the truest version of herself. “I'm trying to be honest and unapologetic about what I want to put  out there, whether it's wholesome, sexy, loud, quiet, if I'm being femme or masc; I don't want to  apologize for it.” 

Slowly, It Dawns finds Canal embarking on a path that mirrors the unraveling of the human  experience. “Life does feel like the sun rising,” she shares of the record’s evocative title. “You  come into the world with very little clarity on the way things are – everything's a little hazy and  confusing. Then, as you get older, your eyes adjust to what life is; it gets messy and complicated,  then spiritual and expansive.”  

Written over the course of the past three years and recorded between London and Los Angeles,  the album captures this sentiment as much musically as it does lyrically. From the sun-kissed  indie pop of ‘June Baby’ and cuban-inflected sizzle of ‘California Sober’, to the meditative  instrumentals of ‘Totally Fucking Fine’ and the cinematic desperation of ‘Cake’, Canal’s stunning  range is on full display across 12 revealing tracks. 

This broad palette of influences and wise-beyond-her-years outlook on the world can be credited  to an upbringing that nurtured her creative side while exposing her to new cultures. Born in Munich to Spanish and American parents, Canal mostly grew up in Madrid, but her dad’s job in  medical tech took their family around the world. Before she was even in her mid-teens, she’d  lived in cities like Shanghai, Tokyo and Dubai. 

But it was her maternal grandma, a classical piano teacher, who insisted Canal’s parents enrol  her in lessons after spotting her musical inclinations from a young age. Training in classical piano  and opera followed until Canal was around 12, before she began studying jazz and eventually  exploring her own songwriting. “Writing just became a very natural thing to me,” she recalls. It  helps that she’s religiously kept diaries since she was six years old. “I write every single day, and  I probably go through a journal every month or two,” she says.  

Her school years were spent hunkered down in the music department recording DIY songs on a  dictaphone before she’d nervously share them on Facebook. But it wasn’t until a music teacher  in Dubai nurtured the potential he saw in Canal – teaching her the industry fundamentals and  introducing her to Coldplay’s music along the way – that a future in singing became a real  possibility. At the same time, she was educating herself in a wide-ranging pool of genre  influences, from Queen and Red Hot Chili Peppers to Bon Iver and Lianne La Havas. 

By 2018, Canal – who dropped out of New York University to go on tour – was well on her way  to becoming the multi-talented singer-songwriter and instrumentalist as we know her today. A  devout believer in the power of a manifesting, her future was set in motion when she posted a  spoof Rolling Stone cover for April Fool’s Day, the headline for which declared how she had  “wowed” Chris Martin with her talents. Little did she know that someone who worked with Martin  saw that very post, and shared one of Canal’s musical covers for him to listen to.  

Immediately impressed by her stirring vocals, Martin helped Canal land a deal at Coldplay’s label  Parlophone Records in 2021. “He’s been a mentor ever since,” she shares. In the ensuing years  Canal has honed her craft and made her mark as an essential voice in indie pop. The Observer  named her “one to watch” in 2023, while The New Yorker spotlighted her as a “rising star of sad girl pop”. NME simply declared that there was “no limit to her ambition”.  

The sunshine-soaked ‘June Baby’ signaled the start of Canal’s bold new era in summer 2024,  the music video for which depicts a flirtatious adolescent romance. She wrote it with Ross  MacDonald from The 1975, with the band’s George Daniel on co-production after connecting  backstage during her Jools Holland debut performance in 2022. “Ross is way too humble for his  own good, and then he gets on any instrument and rips it to shreds,” she shares. Across the  album, she also worked closely with musician and producer Kevin Farzad and co-writer Eg White  (Adele, Kylie Minogue, Sam Smith), both of whom helped to nurture the open, judgment-free  creative environment in which Canal thrives. 

The remaining singles and accompanying visuals take us through the tumultuous stages of life  as if condensed into a single day. The sensual ‘California Sober’ envelops Canal in a heated fog of sensual queer liberation, as a dizzying swell of exotic strings transport us to a sweaty house  party dancing body-to-body. “I’m hopped up on the feeling of romance, and I'm more in my  body than I've ever been,” Canal says. The track – written alongside singer-songwriter Låpsley  – signals a particularly significant sonic leap. “Culturally my family is a hodgepodge of Latino,  Spanish and Southern heritage. Even though I grew up in Spain for many years, it took me a long  time to embrace the magic in the music because I romanticized British and American artists,”  she shares. “But that music is in me, generationally; I’m letting these parts of myself emerge that  were fighting their way in.” 

Later, we arrive at the early hours of the next morning in ‘Cake’, which finds Canal “hiding in  escapism”. “Fuck the cake / Let's go straight to the vodka / We don't ever have to think about  the cracks in the machine,” she sings atop an oppressive electronic beat. “We're in shambles,  everything's fucked, but we're just going to avoid it for a little longer.” 

When we eventually transition into the clean indie-folk instrumentals of ‘15%’, it’s time for the  “walk of shame”, which also ushers in a moment of rebirth. “This is the social anxiety, the  existential doubt. Because when you're at the party, you think you're hot shit, and then when  you're going home, you're like, ‘Oh, did everybody actually hate me?’ Canal says. But the  ambiguous ‘Vauxhall’ signals a reckoning tinged with hope, where the “hangxiety breeds  resurrection”. As Canal explains it: “The bad feelings teach you something about yourself and  about your life”. Wrapping up the album are 2022’s ‘swan song’ – which Chris Martin declared  “one of the best songs ever written” – and its crescendoing, “resentful older sister” ‘Black Swan’. 

More than anything, Slowly, It Dawns has allowed Canal to worldbuild for the first time, all while  defying expectations. “It's out of my comfort zone, because I have an itch to have fun on tour,”  she explains. “I'm interested in how I can get the adrenaline that I hear people talk about when  they're on stage. And I'm like, ‘For real? I need to lie down immediately.’” 

This next chapter is a reminder for Canal to continue advocating for herself, both interpersonally  and as a musician who moves through the world with a limb difference. It’s a question of identity  she was able to explore while making her acting debut in the acclaimed Apple TV+ series Little  America – in which she played an El Salvadorian amputee struggling to adjust to life in Beverly  Hills. “I think the most frustrating element of my career is being defined by one thing that has  nothing to do with my talent or work,” she says. “I am eager and determined to get to the point  where me having one hand is secondary to my artistry, rather than the headline.” 

Arriving at this point has been a journey of both musical and personal discovery for Canal, but  the beauty of it all is that she’s still searching. “I am realizing that nobody has the answers,” she  remarks. “But if there is anyone who does, it's me for my own questions. But it might take a  lifetime to figure it out.”